Participation and communicability

The participation of creation in the divine life': it was this imaginative as well as provocative conception of the relationship between God and the world that Radical Orthodoxy has put forward since the late 1990s as an antidote to secular thought. Among representatives of the Reformed tradition, the idea of participation was met with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it safeguards the intimacy between the creation and God, but how does it substantiate the difference between them? This study tries to deepen and develop this discussion. It discusses Herman Bavinck as spokesman of the Reformed neo-Calvinist tradition and John Milbank as the pre-eminent representative of Radical Orthodoxy. It analyses their conceptions of the relationship between God and the world and explains their different ways of relating to the Platonic-Christian tradition of participation. This study sheds new light on the question as to whether and how participation can have a fruitful place in Reformed theology.